


When the Bough Breaks

by simplyprologue



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Jossed, Season/Series 03, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-17
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-02-25 16:25:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2628287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplyprologue/pseuds/simplyprologue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the stabbing the Navy doctor told her it was highly unlikely that even she did conceive that it would implant, that between the adhesions and the depth and angle of the knife wound she would probably never carry a viable pregnancy, and yet here she is, staring at two pink lines on a stupid white stick ten days after her husband was thrown into federal prison.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. like children's nursery rhymes

**Author's Note:**

> **A/N:** I'm going to blame a lot of people for this one, but mostly my tumblr followers. But also not Meg, who stomped her feet over the fact that I was writing it. Additional shout-out to Ellie about her kitchen counter headcanons. Trigger warnings for pregnancy and miscarriage. This fic contains quite a few spoilers and speculation for what is going to happen later on in the season, so if you're avoiding that, don't read. 
> 
> Many thanks to Pippa and Emily C for their pregnancy knowledge and support. 
> 
> Twenty points to whoever catches the West Wing reference in here.

It doesn’t occur to her that she might be pregnant until Will’s been in prison for almost two weeks. She told herself it was stress, at first. Stress, lack of appetite. It happened while she was embedded; she’d go months without getting her period. It doesn’t even make _sense_. After the stabbing the Navy doctor told her it was highly unlikely that even she did conceive that it would implant, that between the adhesions and the depth and angle of the knife wound she would probably never carry a viable pregnancy, and yet here she is, staring at two pink lines on a stupid white stick.

And it’s stupid, because she’s going to lose it.

Not yet, not at six weeks, but at some point her unstable abdomen is going to evict the embryo, or fetus, if it goes that long. And then she’s going to have to go to her gynecologist, and get a D&C and _what is even the fucking point?_ MacKenzie thinks, considering an abortion.

Get rid of the pregnancy now, or lose it in a few weeks.

With a shuddering sigh, she drops the pregnancy test (her third of the evening) onto the floor beside her.

(She’s on the floor in their fractionally-complete apartment in their half-tiled master bathroom, alone with a paper CVS bag and half a roll of toilet paper. Her BlackBerry is on the unfinished kitchen counter, on silent. Eventually someone will hold her to refusing to pick up after she leaves AWM, but Mac hopes that it won’t be tonight.

Furiously, she wipes away tears from her eyes, staring pointedly at her toes.)

Does she make an appointment with an obstetrician? That would mean admitting that this is happening, that she’s going to go forward with the pregnancy, take the prenatal vitamins, face the morning sickness _that has already fucking started at six weeks_ , be given a due date and have to see the fetus on a screen and hear its heartbeat before she—

Loses it.

Their child would live and die all while Will is in federal lock-up.

He would never have to know.

 

* * *

 

She makes the appointment the next day.

The obstetrician is one her gynecologist recommends (one of the best in the Northeast, definitely the best in Manhattan according to every journal article she reads) and MacKenzie walks into the exam room still refusing to think that this will proceed for anything more than a few more weeks. But it’s Will’s baby, and she’s not giving up on Will so she’s not giving up on this either.

_High risk._

Which means frequent appointments and ultrasounds and giving up caffeine and a script for 1000 milligrams of folic acid, daily and a pamphlet for prenatal yoga that’s public so definitely _out_ and a pamphlet of foods she’s no longer allowed to have Mac can’t even think that far ahead, to be honest. Not with the ninety day deadline she has to get Will out of prison before the deal with the Department of Justice runs out. So she keeps nodding along, trying to take it all in, because she’s doing this—

Alone.

The receptionist at the desk smiles at her on her way out, handing her an appointment card to come back in two weeks.

 

* * *

 

“It’s just a bit of a stomach thing, it’s not a big deal,” Mac tells Will that Saturday when he tells her that she looks pale. “I’m more worried about you.”

He scoffs. “I haven’t run into anyone I put in here, I think I’ll be fine.”

“That’s because you and I both know that this prison is for pretrial offenders,” she replies. “So stop bullshitting me.”

“I’m fine.”

Sighing, she fists her hands on top of the table, trying to ignore the rising wave of nausea she’s been battling all day. She had to wait to come until she stopped retching into the toilet, anyway, but there was no chance she wasn’t going to come at all.

“Okay,” she says, the word perched lightly on the tip of her tongue.

Will watches her carefully.

It’s not like she doesn’t know that her eyes are ringed with the nights of exhaustion, that her lips are cracked and dry, that her skin is pale. It’s not like she isn’t doing her best, drinking all the water she can bear to keep down and eating meals that her stomach refuses to keep down and resting, like she’s supposed to, drinking decaf, like she’s supposed to, eating, like she’s supposed to.

“What?” she asks, almost daring him to say something else, like he isn’t disheveled, hair a mess, in a khaki prison-regulation uniform.

(They already put it behind them. She told him almost right away after he proposed, as soon as he saw the scar where it lives low and ragged on her abdomen.

There was no need for birth control; there would be no babies. If they wanted to, they could adopt, but there would never be—and he told her that the two of them for the rest of his life would be more than just fine.

No matter that she never wanted any of this before him; marriage, a house, a baby.)

“So the source disappeared?” he finally asks, instead.

Breathing through pursed lips, Mac nods, suddenly angry. Or not suddenly, she’s been angry for weeks. Angry, and now terrified and anxious and carrying a baby that is invariably going to die, but her husband is against abortion and she’s afraid he’ll never forgive her if it’s an abortion, not a miscarriage. Not that Will’s opinion on the matter is the most important, but it’s important. He’d see the pregnancy as a baby, if she told him.

And she chose to be _his_ wife.

“He’s left Hong Kong, if all is to be believed,” she says. “He’s stopped communicating with Neal. I’ve got feelers out with every diplomat my father is friends with in Moscow and Vladivostok and Seoul and Beijing and—”

“If he’s smart, he’s destroyed everything,” Will interjects, softly.  

Breathing hard again (she won’t get sick here, she won’t make him worry) through her mouth, she manages to not snap that she knows that. “And according to a friend of mine in Hong Kong, he hasn’t spoken to any American reporters there. It’s just us. Well, you and Neal.”

“I’m not letting them—”

“I know.”

Will looks at her intently, sliding his palms flat across the steel table until the tips of his fingers touch her own.

“Mac, I’m not going to let you get dragged into this mess,” he says quietly, not letting her look away.

“Hon,” she answers, just as quietly. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m already in this fucking mess. I’m your wife.”

“Mac.”

She knows that it’s the right decision. _And I’m pregnant with our baby, so yeah, it’s my fucking mess._ Will is already dead-set on protecting her now. If she tells him, if she lets him think on all the risks and the potential complications, he’ll drive himself mad with panic and there’s not a single chance that this will stay quiet.

Will would tell Charlie. Sloan. Don. Whoever comes next to visit him. Rebecca, probably, and suddenly she’ll be swathed in cotton batting and resigned to a safe corner where she’ll collect dust as they work to find a way to make the conspiracy charge looming over his neck disappear.

He won’t know.

“I am your _wife_ and I don’t need to be protected, Will. I’ve interviewed Taliban fighters and Al-Qaeda leaders, been shot at, gassed, and nearly killed in three different countries. Your source doesn’t scare me and I definitely don’t need to be protected from him,” she seethes, but doesn’t move her hands from where they’re pressed into the table, where her fingers are just barely touching Will’s.

His mouth drops open, eyes widened like he’s afraid of her and for her.

“I’m going to protect _you_ , idiot,” she says, dropping her voice until she’s barely audible, ignoring the prison guards, the other inmates. “I’m going to find yours and Neal’s goddamn source, and I am going to pin him to what he did and get it on video and _you_ are going to walk out of here.”

Will doesn’t say anything. Not until she opens her mouth again, with _I know you don’t like it, but you can’t stop me, you have to let me—_

“I couldn’t—Mac, if you get hurt,” he says, voice scraping over the lowest register it can go.

“And if you get charged with a felony,” she counters. “That’s twenty-five years, Will. Six nearly killed me.”

More than once, too.

(And there is no way, she allows herself to think, for just a moment, just barely. There is no way she is raising their child alone.

But baby or no baby, she has to get Will out of here.)

“Promise me you won’t put yourself in any danger.”

“I won’t.” He balks at that, but she refuses to make that promise. “You know I can’t do that. But I’m pretty good at handling dangerous, thank you. I’m just as adept at martyrdom as you are.”

The last part she tries to say gently, like her voice wasn’t running at the top of her decibel level the night before their wedding and his arrest. _It’s better me than Neal_ has been his argument from the start. Because he’s bigger, he’s older, he has a law degree. Because Neal is his (theirs, really, but Will’s had no practice at sharing people, only protecting them) and so he’ll throw himself into whatever is going to hurt him.

“You’re not helping,” Will chokes out, chancing a glance at the guard stationed over his shoulder before lacing their fingers together. “Just… be careful, then.”

“Aren’t I always?”

She almost tells him, feels a pang of guilt and almost admits to the life growing inside her.

“Almost never,” he says, like he wants it to be funny. It falls flat, and they both know it. “I love you.”

He squeezes her fingers, and then let’s go.

“Love you too,” she whispers.

Staring at him for a long moment, she does her best to rededicate his face to memory until she can come again next Saturday. There’s a moment that calls for a kiss, but they both stand, looking helplessly at each other.

Mac doesn’t move until long after he’s lead back through the door and towards his cell block.

 

* * *

 

She dials her parents’ number half a dozen times; there are people she knows she should _want_ to tell. Her mother, her sisters. Charlie, Sloan, her _staff._ There are people who should be getting updates and sending her useless and somewhat patronizing advice or onesies and the little knit socks and goddamn novelty maternity t-shirts in lieu of unrequested guidance.

What MacKenzie does is, at seven weeks, call the contractor.

The bedroom next to the master suite needs to be painted a different color. Not the deep maroon she and Will had selected. A soothing green, she tells the contractor, looking over swatches. Or maybe a buttercup yellow.

She ends up selecting a shade of mint called “lacewing” and shuts down any thoughts of a garden themed nursery.

There’s cramping, like her obstetrician warned. Cramping, and headaches, and fatigue so severe that tears of exhaustion roll down her cheeks as the nausea has her huddling over the toilet late into the night and early in the morning.

Every hour she’s awake is another hour she commits to finalizing design plans.

Spread out on the bathroom floor (subway tile, off-white and not cream) are home decorating magazines and flooring samples and furniture catalogues and it’s no longer and fight between her and Will but a fight for her _and_ Will, somehow, and she sobs against the toilet lid when she finds the polished railroad sleeper countertops he liked in one of her magazines and makes a note in her folio to tell the contractor to find her samples of those in the morning.

She had wanted polished marble, and he was going to let her have it.

All she wants anymore is for him to come _home._

“He likes stainless. Which is fine, I do too,” she murmurs, after being able to move to the bed. The suite was finished first (she told Will she could live among renovation wreckage so long as she had a bedroom to retreat to) but she only finished unpacking those boxes from storage a few days ago. “I think I like the wall ovens, with the right swinging doors. He’ll like that this one has a frozen pizza mode. I like that it has child safety locks.”

The den, now that she’s selected a molding and mantle for the fireplace, is finished. Furniture (a plush corduroy sofa sectional and matching arm chairs, easier to clean than suede and warmer than leather) is set to be delivered in the morning.

Next on her agenda is the kitchen, even if Mac can barely stand the thought of food.

Curling up onto her side, she flips idly through the pages of _Kitchen & Bath Design News, _reaching behind her and sliding her hand under Will’s pillow.

It’s pathetic (or maybe it’s just hormones, but it’s not, because she’s been doing it since the night Will was arrested) but she’s started sleeping with shirts that she’s been taking out of his hamper. At visiting hours there’s no prolonged touching, and she suspects even if she could get her arms around him he’d just smell like recycled air and the harsh detergent they wash the prison uniforms with in the laundry. So instead she’s sleeping with one of his button ups and praying he gets sprung before she runs out of his dirty clothes to keep her from forgetting his smell.

“I don’t know if I like the Samsung or the Whirlpool,” she murmurs. “And do we really need twenty-five cubic feet of storage?”

She wants Will to come back to a home, not half-painted walls and unfinished rooms.

There are no promises on a baby.

 

* * *

 

“Mac, we’re going to Hang Chews, do you want to—”

“No thanks, you guys go ahead.”

“Are you sure?”

“I need to finish up here. You go, you deserve it.”

 

* * *

 

It doesn’t even matter who’s asking, it’s the same endless rapport where some eager and well-meaning member of the senior staff (or Sloan, or Don, or even Elliot a few times) invites her along to the bar, or to wherever they’ve decided to go to dinner together, to see a late movie. She smiles as kindly as she can, peering up at them over whatever file or affidavit or wire report or document she’s working on, and politely declines.

Sloan pushes. Don frowns. Tess and Tamara will goad. Jim puts his hands on his hips and appraises her warily, before nodding and leaving her alone. Elliot actually sat down and forced her to have a ten minute conversation with him about the renovations, before appearing satisfied and drifting back up to his office. Maggie stands across from her desk with her hands clasped in front of her and offers to assist her in whatever she needs and every time Charlie makes an appearance she half-expects him to tell her to quit lying, he knows that it’s not just stress.

Neal just lingers helplessly, so she did go to Starbucks with him once and pretended to drink a latte to make him feel better.

For the most part, she puts together a tentative rundown for the next day and goes back to their apartment on Central Park South, wandering around the empty, half-finished rooms trying to remember what Will wanted to do with them.

And if not that, she looks at the data Reese and Sloan have put together about their ratings.

ACN is at number one.

On day nineteen of Will being in prison (people do love cliffhangers and heroes in peril, after all) they broke past FOX in the eight o’clock timeslot.

She can’t tell _him_ so she murmurs it to herself, letting her fingers fan out tentatively over her lower abdomen.

 

* * *

 

“It all looks good,” her doctor tells her at her eight week appointment. “Your levels are good, you’ve gained five pounds.”

They’re both ignoring the fact that she has a husband who should be here, but the obstetrician is delightfully discrete. Even the building where her practice is located is exceptionally secure, tucked among lawyer’s offices and other medical groups. The photographers that Mac knows are trailing her (although not as steadfastly as they were the first few days after the wedding, the arrest, waiting for her to crack or break down sobbing it would seem) won’t be able to get much out of her exiting a skyscraper stacked with a multitude of uninteresting professionals.

And then, of course, because the pregnancy is _high risk_ —

(Mac knows she really hasn’t gained much weight at all, with how fucking sick she’s been. It’s all in her breasts. The goddamn building won’t give her away, but the fact that she’s gone bra shopping twice this month might.

Either that, or someone’s going to start reporting that she’s having an affair.)

She pulls up her shirt and leans back, her eyes following the screen that the doctor brings closer. Wonders if she should feel something besides coldness of the gel and the pressure of the ultrasound wand against her belly.

 _This is yours and Will’s child_ , MacKenzie tries to tell herself.

It’s a circle on the screen and a racing heartbeat on a doppler.

“It’s strong,” the doctor comments, unfazed by her lack of a reaction. “Which is what we’re looking for, at this point. I have to finish the measurements, but eyeballing it the fetus appears to be on track in its growth. I think we can confirm your January 8th due date.”

“Okay,” Mac says, if only because she feels like she’s supposed to be saying something, not just wondering if she’s missed any emails from work since entering the examination room.

“It all looks good, MacKenzie,” she reiterates.

Seconds later, a printout of the ultrasound is put into her hands.

Of the baby.

Swallowing hard, she looks up at the doctor who is busy noting something in her chart. “You said to expect bleeding, but what if I—” Her mouth is dry, and for once she doesn’t have a water bottle in her purse. “What if it’s heavy. And cramping, and I—”

The doctor blinks, her gaze unshifting from professionalism. “You call me. If I’m at the hospital, you’ll go there. If I’m here, you’ll be given an emergency appointment. I’ll immediately do an ultrasound to find a heartbeat and, if the pregnancy has progressed to that point, fetal movement. Bleeding in the first trimester is usually caused by pressure on arteries in the cervix or a subchorionic hematoma, and neither would threaten the viability of the pregnancy. There is no reason, considering the fact that you’ve made it to eight weeks under an immense amount of stress, that you cannot continue this pregnancy to term.”

Mac almost asks the doctor how to spell the second one.

It doesn’t matter, she can look it up later.

Biting her lip, she nods. “Alright.”

“This is when Mr. McAvoy’s very impressive insurance can be a peace of mind to you,” she jokes, nearly deadpan, looking at that line her chart.

Nearly giggling, Mac tucks the ultrasound away in her purse.

 

* * *

 

Saturday comes again, and upon hearing that there haven’t been any leads for her to go chasing into alleys or dark corners, Will relaxes. She, on the other hand, has barely been able to sleep since the ultrasound appointment on Thursday.

He tells her she’s too pale again, and she shrugs, blaming it on the lighting and then tells him about the ratings, how she’s been putting Maggie on the air more and more since her EPA scoop proved to be an angle none of them anticipated.

“You’d think this was some sort of stunt,” Will says with a dumbfounded laugh.

But he’s pleased, she thinks.

“Reese says it’s good. If we’re playing ball with FOX in the ratings then the board has a bigger interest in keeping ACN. And Randy and Blair haven’t been able to short the stock, yet, since bigger ratings means more cash flow in... God, who would have thought I’d ever be here, rambling like an egomaniac about the _ratings._ ”

“And the buyers?” he asks, smirking.

“Charlie said the Lansings might find the money yet.” Not that she’s kept explicitly appraised of that end of the whole deal. “Rebecca knows more about that than I do, and you’re seeing her on Monday.” And then, more quietly, “Next week it’ll have been a month. The apartment’s almost finished.”

She won’t tell him that the guest bedroom is now an airy mint color and that she’s hesitantly begun looking at catalogues full of nursery furniture to fill it with. White furniture, she’s found she’s partial to. It’s all she’s been looking at since Thursday. Cribs and changing tables and dressers and rocking chairs, except she doesn’t want to do any of it without him.

Because it still doesn’t feel real, and she thinks it would be real if he knew.

What kind of mother is she? She heard the heartbeat, she’s throwing up every morning, her jeans are starting to not fit, her breasts ache.

She’s pregnant.

It’s been two weeks, and there hasn’t been a miscarriage.

(Yet.)

“The kitchen?” he asks, sliding his hands across the table.

As does she, until their fingers meet. “The plumber’s coming on Tuesday to hook everything up. Bye-bye take out.”

The smile on her face is small, and she doesn’t feel it at all. Their source hasn’t resurfaced yet, and even though she has the baby to consider she can’t help but feel that building their home when he could spend the rest of his life in prison is something of a farce. He knows it too.

“How are you?” she asks.

He demurs, like he’s done every week so far. “I’ll be fine when it’s over.”

“Will.”

Xanax only goes so far, and she’s wondering if she should call Dr. Habib and see how feasible jailhouse visits are for psychiatrists.

“I’m fine,” he repeats, narrowing his eyes like he does when he means to prove a point and she almost kicks him under the table.

“Lie to whoever you like,” she says, carefully enunciating her words as she leans over the table, knowing _this_ is the moment that they’ll be revisiting if… when he gets out, if there’s furniture ordered, if the nursery is still a nursery. “But I am your wife, and don’t think for a second I don’t see right through you. So say whatever the fuck you want Billy, but I’m the one you’re stuck living with once I rescue you.”

“Rescue me?” he asks, snorting.

Cocking her head, she lifts an eyebrow. “Hopefully before you’re reduced to selling your farm boy ass for a pack of Lucky’s.”

(A helpless giggle builds in the back of her throat, but doesn’t escape.

He’ll have to quit smoking.)

There’s hardly any distraction, though, despite his weak laughter.

“Stay safe.”

He traces the diamond on her ring, the smooth platinum of her wedding band.

“No promises.”

 

* * *

 

And at last, she gets a phone call from an old friend at the Kremlin, at three in the afternoon and long after business hours in Moscow.

“Doushenka, all I can tell you is that he was seen on CCTV going into the building where our consulate is in Hong Kong. Tell the one who handles your secure file transfer to be ready. I cannot give you his identity or where he is now. You’ll have to do that for yourself.”

 

* * *

 

The source has a name, and she learns it five days later. Buys a burner phone (her cell phone is being watched, Molly all but told her that) and goes home to call another old friend with NATO who tips her off to someone they grew up played with at the French Ambassador’s townhome in Berlin who now works for Interpol who gives her confirmation via a list of denied visas and another lead.

_Sheremetyevo International Airport._

Which is when she calls her godfather, the charge d’affaires at the British Embassy in Moscow, after slipping out to the Walgreens down the block to buy more international calling cards. Her godfather promises to meet with the head of immigration to see where their source went next.

Thanking him, Mac hangs up, and calls Neal.

“Alright punk, we’re in back in this. You better be in my office by eight tomorrow morning.”

The burner phone is set down on the kitchen counter (the polished sleepers, the holes from the railroad nails resined in and the sanded down) next to her BlackBerry she allows herself to breathe.

Day 39.

The kitchen is finished, and the sitting room, the library, the den. The dining room needs the molding and to be furnished. The home office needs wiring, the desks to be delivered. The nursery is finished with nothing but a white lacquer crib, still in its box, but the door to that room remains closed for her own sanity.

Most days it’s enough just to remind herself to eat.

Eleven weeks, three days.

The apartment still doesn’t feel like home. It feels like it’s gasping for air, like it’s a pair of rattling lungs in an empty chest. And she’s doing her best, pulling her boxes out of storage and cluttering up the rooms with their things until there’s no demarcation left between what’s his and what’s hers and filling up the pantry with foods her stomach won’t tolerate, hanging up pictures of them and their families in their frames.

The ultrasound picture is still sandwiched between wire reports in her purse.

“He’d probably want it framed,” she says out loud. And then, trying the words, “The first picture of the baby.”

If all goes well (and isn’t she owed that, by now, or is the universe still paying her back for something) she’ll be able to tell Will soon. Even if not, Mac doesn’t know how many more weeks she’ll be able to walk into the lower Manhattan prison complex without her situation making itself apparent. A loose-fitting blouse over jeans has been hiding it so far, but she knows in a few more weeks he’ll be able to tell.

Already she’s imagining the look of betrayal on his face, before it’s overshadowed by anxiety and self-recrimination.

But he _can’t_ give up the source.

“No, if he gives up the source he’ll be in very big trouble,” she sighs, padding into their bedroom, suddenly very tired. “I haven’t worked on this show for three years, busted my ass after Genoa, for our credibility to be shredded because we outed the biggest source we’ve ever had. It’s one thing to be fucked over by the audience, but if no one will talk to us…”

In the midst of unbuttoning her blouse she turns, facing the full-length mirror next to her dresser.

She’s avoided looking at herself for weeks now, since her body started changing.

There is a very definite curve to her belly. Small, but noticeable. Biting her lip she shrugs off her shirt and pulls her camisole up over her head, standing in front of the mirror in nothing but her underwear. There are lines along her hipbones that weren’t there before, where the tiny bump juts out, and she smooths her fingers over them before allowing the pads of her fingertips trip over the curve of her stomach.

Exhaling shakily, she turns away, reaching for the shirt she took from Will’s side of the closet and pulling it over head.

“You’re definitely in there.”

She goes to bed, pulling back the covers and curling up on her side of the bed before arching an arm towards Will’s, tugging the shirt hidden under his pillow out from its spot and bringing it close to her face.

“I’ll bring him home,” she whispers.

And at last, begins to hope.

 

* * *

 

Five and a half hours later, she wakes up with blood pooling between her thighs and a rising sense of panic that doesn’t make sense until the first cramp hits her.

“Okay,” she mutters, eyes focusing on the blood on her fingers in the dim light. “Okay, okay, okay.”

Kicking back the covers she struggles out of bed, pressing the backs of her fingers against her mouth to push back the dry heaves she feels coming. Flipping on the ceiling light she gapes at the dark red stain on the fitted sheet before bending at the waist and bolting for the kitchen through the dark apartment, ignoring the rivulets of wetness running down her bare legs.

She’s running on instinct, barely paying attention to who she calls.

“Ch—Charlie? I need your help.”

 

* * *

 

Fifty minutes later she’s in the maternity ward of Mt. Sinai, eyes screwed tightly shut as she tells herself to keep breathing. This is it. She’s losing the baby. There’s too much blood, and Mac knows it’s too much—don’t mothers have an instinct about this sort of thing? It’s too much blood, of course it is, just like the Navy doctor said four years ago.

She’ll never be able to carry a viable pregnancy.

“Hang in there, kiddo.”

They’re waiting for her obstetrician to finish an emergency caesarian, and what she would do to be able to take a Xanax.

_Dr. Goldman will be with you shortly, Mrs. McAvoy. If you could please change into this gown._

Charlie, his hair uncombed and his clothing rumpled, squeezes her hand. He hadn’t even questioned any of this when she told him, just got into his car and asked her where to go.

“I haven’t even told him,” she says on a whistley exhale. “I thought Will would drive himself insane if he knew I was pregnant, so I didn’t tell him. And then if this happened, and he didn’t know, then it just wouldn’t have—have happened. But now that it’s happening, I don’t—I painted one of the bedrooms. I bought a crib, and looked at stupid newborn outfits, and parenting books. I didn’t tell anyone.”

Tutting softly, he brushes her bangs away from her face.

“MacKenzie.”

“I know,” she moans, covering her face with her hands. “I know, okay.”

Charlie’s quiet for a moment. After all, here they are. In a hospital at nearly 5:30 AM in an over-air conditioned room and the hospital gown isn’t good for any warmth at all and any time she moves at all she feels what she thinks is more blood on her thighs.

“Well, I won’t pretend that I didn’t suspect,” he says, voice gentle.

“How?”

Lifting her hands she blinks open her eyes, ignoring the tears that spill.

He scoffs lightly, wiping her cheeks carefully. “Mac, you’re hardly the first pregnant woman I’ve been around.”

It takes her a minute to be certain that she’ll be able to speak without her words devolving into sobs like they did over the phone; her panic has settled into a grim certainty.

“I just… I told Neal to be in my office at eight. I need to call my contact at the Russian immigration office again. I need you to help me be ready to do this in three hours because if we spook the source again and he disappears I cannot afford to lose another _month_ to track him down again,” she whispers fiercely, staring up at the ceiling tiles before turning her head, the paper on the exam table crinkling. Charlie’s expression is set in the way it was when they first spoke after she failed the psych evaluation four years ago, when he told her to come back and produce _News Night_ and she insisted, over and over again, that she no longer had what it took. “And if I’m having a miscarriage I’m going to need you to—”

Without warning, emotion strangles her voice.

Charlie sighs.

“I wish you had told me.”

“Then it would have been really happening.” Crying, she does her best to catch the tears as they fall.

It’s really happening.

She’s miscarrying.

Eleven weeks, four days.

“Hon, it’s a baby. It’s happening whether you’re ready or not,” Charlie says, procuring a handkerchief from deep in his jacket’s front pocket. Mac thinks he means to hand it to her, but instead he starts to clean her face again. “And no, don’t worry yet. Babies have gone through worse and come into the world after it. This one’s gonna be a fighter like their Mom.”

“What if—”

“I’m here. I’m holding your hand. Through all of it.”

Her cramping returning, the same nausea that’s been battering her stomach for the past six weeks rises up. Leaning up onto her elbows, Mac spots a bedpan sitting on the doctor’s station.

“I’m gonna be sick.”

Charlie holds back her hair.

 

* * *

 

“And there’s your baby,” Dr. Goldman says, and then repeats herself when the only reaction Mac can muster is a choked off _What?_ “Baby McAvoy has a strong heartbeat, I’m not detecting any placental abruption or signs of miscarriage.”

Blinking rapidly, her eyes hone in on the profile on the ultrasound screen.

There’s her baby.

 

* * *

 

Ten minutes into the scan, Dr. Goldman finds a complex mass near her cervix that she diagnoses as a subchorionic hematoma.

“It’s small, all things considered,” she says, pressing down harder on her abdomen with the wand. “About two centimeters. Must have developed quickly, since I didn’t catch it during your last appointment. I'll have to do a transvaginal scan to confirm. I’m not finding any others developing, but now we’ll know to look out for them. It should resolve itself within a few days, though.”

“All things considered?” Mac asks.

_MacKenzie, but I’m afraid that the trauma from your injuries were extensive. Because of the depth and angle of the wound, there was some uterine involvement. I’m sorry, but it’s very unlikely you will ever be able to have children._

The doctor hums, and she looks down to see her measuring from the scar to the placement of the hematoma. “I think your previous injuries left this quadrant of your pelvis unstable and now I’m trying to catch the adhesions on the ultrasound to see if what’s going on is if one is restricting the movement of the uterus. If that is the case then what could be happening is that you have scar tissue disrupting the attachment of the placenta to one specific location.”

She had repeated the Navy surgeon’s words back to Will, two nights after they had gotten engaged.

“That sounds terrifying.”

Dr. Goldman nods sharply, tossing her dark ponytail back over her shoulder. “I won’t lie, you’ll probably be on bed rest once you pass a certain threshold.”

“Can that threshold be _after_ my husband gets out of prison?” Mac jokes weakly.

“I’m sure your staff of one hundred can be useful,” Charlie says, finally speaking. Looking over, she sees a smile growing on his face. “It’ll all work out, Mac.”

With a contained smile the obstetrician prints her out a copy of the ultrasound and places it into her hands.

“Well, would you look at that,” Charlie says, almost amazed.

Surprising herself, Mac begins to laugh. The ultrasound is grainy, and the baby is small, but it’s all there. Head, nose, lips. Arms and hands and legs and feet. But there’s her baby.

 

* * *

 

The next two days are a whirlwind. Neal is pacing in her office when she arrives, a little late, and tells her he’s gotten an encrypted message from their source—he tried to get into Cuba but was stopped by the customs agents and sent back to Moscow. Mac immediately gets on the phone with her contact in the Kremlin, and calls in a favor owed, and twelve hours later they’re on a flight to Moscow.

“Maybe try a gin and tonic?” Neal suggests, frowning worriedly as she clutches the airsickness bag like a security blanket.

4:30 AM, Eastern Standard Time. _Right on time_ , she thinks, waving Neal off. “Not really an option for me,” she manages to get out, smirking at the comprehension dawning on her face once her hands span out over her belly.

“Fuck,” he says in a hushed voice, and then catches himself. “Really?”

Trying to make herself more comfortable in the small seat, she nods. “Yup.”

“Well, that explains things.”

She doesn’t know if Neal is talking about the wedding or her sudden lack of involvement in her staff’s social lives, but either way she doesn’t care. They’re too close to getting the source to go on the record with his name and story for her to care about how the staff will be gossiping about a would be shotgun wedding.

They land at Sheremetyevo International Airport less than an hour later, and Mac’s passport gets them both through at the customs gate with little fuss. In the terminal they meet a British attaché, who passes off a stack of documents before disappearing out into the night.

“What are those?” Neal asks, clutching their carry-on bags full of recording equipment to his sides.

Thumbing through the manila envelope, Mac checks the forms before answering. “His asylum papers.”

His eyebrows shoot into his hairline, and she snorts.

“Will and Charlie have the scary domestic contacts. I have the scary international ones.”

It’s as simple as that.

They find a hidden corner in Sheremetyevo and set up their interview. At promptly nine, the source approaches them, seemingly recognizing them both. After brushing her hair and fixing her make up MacKenzie pins mics to both of them and conducts an hour long interview.

The footage is sent back home to Rebecca to deal with the FBI and she and Neal go through security to board a flight back to the US. Mac’s hand remains on her BlackBerry the whole time, and as she and Neal eat questionable airport food for an early dinner (with Neal asking her every other bite if the food is okay, that he could go get more— _No, you can’t, I’m the one of us who speaks Russian_ —or something different for her to eat) it finally rings.

8:30 AM, Eastern Standard Time.

MacKenzie breaks down crying where they’re sitting at their gate, passing the phone to Neal instead.

“When do they—when are they going to release him?” Neal asks, standing in his excitement. “No, we’re—we’re set to touch down at JFK at six something... No, Mac’s great. Just uh—a little overwhelmed. Been a bit of stressful day… no, I have no doubt he’ll want to go back on the air right away either. I guess Mac and I’ll sleep on the flight.”

 

* * *

 

(Mac does manage to sleep, both at the gate and during the first few hours of the flight, her adrenaline finally dying away and for the first time in months she can really sleep, even if she does drool on Neal’s shoulder.

 _He_ doesn’t sleep at all.

Not for lack of trying, and they wind up watching a really shitty movie with Neal’s headphones and Mac pulls out the ultrasound to show him halfway through the flight, swearing him to secrecy.

“So I take it there’s not a single shot in hell that you’d name the baby after me?” he quips.

“Nope.”)

 

* * *

 

An AWM car picks them up at the arrivals terminal and by the time they’re delivered at the curb thirty minutes before broadcast a massive crowd of paparazzi and fans have amassed which can only mean one thing—

Her heart pounds as they go through security and into the elevator, the climb to their floor taking painful minutes. Nervous giggles bubble up her throat and she’s barely keeping it together by the time the doors open into the foyer.

“Here,” Neal says, gesturing her to hand over her luggage.

“Thanks,” she says breathlessly.

In the chaos that the newsroom has become it’s not hard to find him, at the center of it and already in his suit and tie, hair and makeup fixed for the show. And staring at his Blackberry, and then his watch.

Stopping a few feet away, she looks him over, satisfying herself with his appearance before finally alerting him to arrival.

“Waiting for me?”

Head snapping up, Will pivots to face her.

“Sorry I didn’t wait for you to spring me from the tower,” he says eventually, looking her up and down like she did to him before stepping forward and wrapping his arms all the way around her.

“You need a haircut,” she says, voice muffled by his shoulder as she slides her arms between the suit jacket and the collared shirt underneath. He’s here, and he’s warm and sturdy and she _really_ wants to tell him but she can’t do that and then expect him to be able to be on the air in twenty minutes.

She’s waited almost six weeks.

What’s another hour?

Still, Mac has to close her eyes to keep herself from crying with relief, angling her belly away to keep it from pushing up against his.

He snorts, burying his face in her hair. “Really?”

“Shut it.”

And then, at long last, she kisses him.

They’re interrupted when the staff realizes that she and Neal have returned, and begin to  applaud. Ten minutes later, they’re back in their places, with Will behind the anchor desk and her in the control room and Mac curses her hormones the entire broadcast as Tess continues to hand her a steady supply of tissues.

An hour after that they’re making their excuses, and finally, finally, she’s taking Will home.

 

* * *

 

Before she and Neal rushed off to Moscow she had ninety minutes to run back and pack a bag. She had her go-bag, of course, but there were documents she needed and the burner phone and in the rush of it she’d grabbed one of the empty frames stacked on the dining room table. Walking through the apartment now, she sees that the contractor finished while she was away.

Will is dragging her through their home by the hand, peering into all the rooms one by one. She’s giggling, and near tears, and nervous and exhausted and half a dozen other emotions that solidify in her stomach but not in a bad way, not in a way that weigh her down, just remind her of all they’ve been through since April.

Until finally he gets to the nursery, pushing open the door. It takes him a few seconds to process it.

(Sitting in the airport waiting to go to Moscow she’d gone through half a dozen baby furniture websites, rush ordering a changing table to match the crib and a farm animal mobile in buttercup yellow and grey and cream and a bookshelf etched with the same designs and a plush rug and left special delivery instructions with their doorman before finally ceding to their boarding call.

And so now all the furniture, clearly marked, rests in boxes against the mint-colored walls.)

There’s a lone picture on the wall—hanging, framed and matted, is the eight-week scan. Letting go of her hand Will walks into the room, drifting towards it.

_McHale, MacKenzie. 10 June 2013._

With a stunned affect, he looks back at her.

“That’s our baby?”

Digging her front teeth into a smile, Mac nods, leaning behind him in the doorway.

"Why didn’t you tell me—"

"I didn’t want you to worry about us." She watches him take it down off its hook, carefully examining the tiny mass of cells and blood that will become, god-willing, their child. "And we’re fine. Eleven weeks, almost twelve. I found out a little over a week after—after you—" Despite herself, her voice chokes off with emotion and he turns around, the softest expression on his face. "I have another appointment soon. I can’t wait for you to hear the heartbeat."

“But you said…”

_I can’t have children. I know, last time, we talked about kids and we said…_

“I’m high risk,” she explains as delicately as possible. “I’m seeing a specialist. Like I said, I didn’t want you to worry... ”

Later, she can tell him about the hematoma and the scar tissue and probably bed rest and hopefully that conversation happens before he finds the bloodied sheets in the garbage, but for now she doesn’t want to instigate any more anxiety in him than strictly necessary.

“You went to Moscow,” he says, voice low.

She shrugs, wincing. “I was the only one who could have gotten Russia to give him asylum.” And then, before he can assert that he isn’t important enough, she crosses her arms and gives him what she hopes is a pleading look. “I can’t have this baby without you.”

Her words come out a plaintive whisper, and Will’s face softens again.

“Twelve weeks. That’s the entire first trimester.”

“Trust me when I say you haven’t missed all the morning sickness, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

He cracks a smile.

“No, I mean, do you have a…?” he asks, gesturing towards her middle.

Worrying her bottom lip between her teeth she pulls up the hem of her blouse to reveal how ill-fitting her trousers have become.

Replacing the scan on the wall, he walks across the room to her and fits his large hands over the slight curve of her midsection. “How did I not notice that?”

“For what it’s worth, I _have_ been trying to hide it.”

She looks up from where his hands are exploring her bared stomach to Will’s face. He’s as exhausted as she is, no easy feat, his face more heavily lined than it was two months ago, the hair at his temples lighter. But happy, she thinks.

Noticing her watching him, he leans forward, softly pressing his lips against hers before dropping carefully to his knees. Her fingers thread through his hair, combing it into place over and over again.

Framing her hips with his hands he kisses her stomach next and, eyes watering, her vision blurs.

_Home._


	2. Coda

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **A/N:** A brief epilogue I wrote for someone on tumblr. Takes place a few months after the end of the story. Obviously not canon-compliant, although Charlie is still dead.

At promptly thirty-one weeks, the hematoma returns and with a flatly encouraging  _You had a good run, Mac, but the size of this one is bigger than the last and you can’t risk the bleeding at this point of your pregnancy,_ from Dr. Goldman she finds herself on absolute bed rest until contractions start. 

Hopefully not within the next six weeks.

So she stays in bed. And on the couch. The chaise lounge. 

Alone, from ten o’clock in the morning until ten at night. Or for the most part, anyway. The look of panic that first appeared when she first told Will about the bloodied sheets the morning she left for Moscow with Neal, about the cramping and the pre-dawn emergency room visit with the maternal-fetal health specialist—the look of panic and guilt returns and stays and Will tries to come home for lunch most days or at least send someone along to keep her company.

Failing that, she does a lot of Skyping in to meetings.

But MacKenzie is okay with being alone. After all, it was her and baby alone for over a month before Will got out of prison. Running a hand over her stomach, she pushes her fingers against where Charlotte has what might be her foot. And then changes the channel back to ACN to watch Sloan on  _Market Wrap-Up._

 _“_ And now we’re onto the part of the day where Mummy has  _no idea_ what Auntie Sloan is talking about,” she says, rubbing the heel of her hand over where Charlotte has begun to kick. 

She follows the doctor’s orders. Which means that she can be up for about twenty minutes a day (which makes showering interesting and cooking in general a feat) and to use the bathroom but while Mac is perfectly comfortable risking her own health, the health of the baby…

Especially after Charlie’s death two days after Will’s release which just compounded the bloodied sheets and the guilt and the panic with unstoppable anxiety.

But she also finds herself bothering the baby every waking hour, making sure she’s moving and responsive and  _alive._

MacKenzie has no idea how to be a mother, never even wanted it before Will, before coming back to Manhattan with medications and panic of her own and desperately trying to force the pieces together into a new family to make up for her far-flung biological one, her and Will and Charlie and Don and Sloan and the staff building a home she could protect and defend and kids to teach and mold— _  
_

And by then, the door had been closed to her.

Until the two lines appeared on the stick. 

She feels Charlotte change positions, and holds her breath until the distinctly uncomfortable sensation passes. 

Fear is logical. The past year has taught them that the worst can happen, and often to them, and even though Mac reminds herself every day that even if Charlotte had to be delivered today she wouldn’t be a micro-preemie, that she’d be viable, that she’s doing everything right to make sure she stays pregnant—

Even though she reminds herself that she didn’t want to be anyone’s wife, either, before she met Will and now here she is, Will’s wife and pretty damn good at it—

"And then I’ll call Daddy and make sure he’s not going to try to sneak Syria back into the B-block, and he’ll probably want to talk to you for a little bit."

—and she can be a pretty damn good mother, too. 

They may have lost Charlie, but they’ll have Charlotte.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
